A NAD Half Century and the Hermeneutics of 'fucknatty'

Three good rides in a week of sweltering mid-July. During a week in which the Tour entered the mountains and then rode across the scorching south of France, I rode across the scorching roads of the Greater Woo. Fantastic.

Today in particular. Sunday. A heated boomer. I got out reasonably early, by 8:50. It would have been nicer to hit the road by 7:30 but that wasn't in the cards this morning. It was 72 degrees when I set out, the sun was rising steadily into a sky scattered with thin clouds, and I knew I was due for a hot one.

Getting toward really hot early

Interestingly, I had my attitude well-adjusted both toward the heat and toward more philosophical matters. Just after setting out and cycling happily through the quite empty Sunday morning neighborhood streets, and flushed with the good vibe of a hot July weekend day, I decided this would be a NAD ride.

Drifting past Becker College, heading for the hills

NAD stands for No Animosity Day. I forswore feeling or expressing animosity toward anyone or any thing. I would sing the praises of competent drivers when I encountered them, and forgive the morons, do-gooders, and general inconsiderate & blithely unaware car-driving bastards that on any given ride are legion; instead, I vowed to manifest nothing but Positivity and Acceptance. I would embrace the Empathetic Response. No matter how provoked or righteously aggrieved I found myself, I would take the proverbial high road and let it all go.

Dubstoevsky in a state of grace

And it worked. The entire ride was incident-free. No one shouted at me, no one cut me off or pulled out in front of me, no one hovered behind me afraid to pass or broke the flow of traffic trying to be nice and let me go when they shouldn't. For fifty miles I sailed along in a state of irie acceptance. Only once did someone lean out their window to shout at me as they sped by, and that person only wanted to compliment my "Steal Your Face" jersey.

"Nice shirt, man!" he shouted as he leaned halfway out the passenger window. I gave him the thumbs-up.

Aside: I don't think a ride has passed that someone hasn't complimented, or remarked approvingly upon, the Dead shirt when I've worn it. A fraternity of Dead Heads, a tribe of kindness. 

Early in the ride I came upon stretches of Forest and Holden Streets that had been scraped over in preparation for re-paving; they were rough, and corrugated, and unpleasant and my reaction upon encountering them was to utter a spontaneous expletive - "fucknatty!" I immediately caught myself, thinking that I was breaking the NAD Dictum, but then I wondered if, in fact, I was engaging in animosity. I came to believe that I wasn't.

Picking my way carefully but steadily up the ascending stretch of un-Belgian pavé, it occurred to me that sometimes the meaning of an utterance depends very much on the emotion behind the outburst. By shouting "fucknatty!" in this instance I was not expressing animosity for the road (which would be silly anyway), nor did I feel any particular antipathy toward the Department of Public Works for leaving the road in a state of disrepair; indeed, this was evidence of an improving situation, one that required time, and one that shouldn't be subjected to the animus of a temporarily inconvenienced rider. Indeed not.

So what I was actually expressing was the emotion of frustration. That lead to the realization that the utterance of the oath "fucknatty" in this context meant that the term was actually multi-dimensional. Of course I accepted the verity that in certain circumstances "fucknatty" might clearly be invoked in a fit of animosity, but I also concluded that the term was not necessarily used for that purpose. In fact, contextual circumstance must be considered when evaluating the hermeneutics of spontaneous expletives. One cannot codify an expressive outburst by a narrow interpretation of the verbiage deployed.

A further use of what I now realize to be a very versatile expletive emerged later on in the ride. The specifics of the incident escape me but I found myself yet again barking "fucknatty!" aloud, but without animus or frustration. This time I used it as a means of expressing incredulity, as if to say "are you kidding me? this again?!"

Wachusett Reservoir, near Sterling

Whatever it was, it didn't matter. I was sailing along. I was sweating profusely, baking in the sun, ecstatic to be alive and in moderate discomfort (the discomfort reminded me that, being healthy, I had nothing to complain about). I was turning the pedals - "the wheel is turning and you can't slow down" - I was living the cycling life.

At one point, I whizzed by a painted turtle, its head peaking quizzically from its shell on the side of the road. I braked to a halt, turned around, and went back to steer it off the road and into the shrubs.

The compass always points to Terrapin.

Or perhaps to Rome.

Roman ruins excavated by Dr. Dubstoevsky

The point is that we drift far and wide and that, under the best of circumstances, we disavow our animosity and embrace the incredulity of Life itself. The circle is wide. The planet spins on its own tumultuous gyration. We're just along for the ride.